Three Days as a car2go VIP

When the car2go car-sharing service appeared in Toronto, I signed up immediately. I’m already a Zipcar member, and will continue with my Zipcar membership (for now) since it’s useful for larger vehicles, but I really like the idea of a car that I can pick up in one location, drop in another, and just pay by the minute without having to predetermine the length of time that I am going to have the car. Where Zipcar is a better replacement for a regular rental car (I almost never use Budget or Avis any more), car2go replaces taxi and transit rides in a zone from Eglinton to the lake, and the South Kingsway/Jane to Victoria Park. You can take the cars outside the home area, but you can’t leave them there; within the zone, you can end your reservation and leave the car at any Green P (City of Toronto) parking lot plus a few of the Target Park lots. It costs $0.35/minute to drive, which sounds like a lot except when you consider that it’s cheaper than a taxi, and it maxes out at $12.99/hour and $65.99/day which makes it competitive with Zipcar’s weekend prices.

car2go is owned and run by Daimler, who make Smart cars, and their fleet comprises identical 2-seater Smart cars with a built-in onboard system for interacting with the car2go system as well as providing GPS capabilities. The GPS shows all of the valid parking locations, too, so when you get close to your destination you can see exactly where you can park and end your reservation. They’re also fun to drive, especially if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool standard transmission driver and tip it over to the semi-automatic mode where you can shift gears yourself (no clutch required). As a bit of a technology geek, I like how they can update the interface in the cars remotely: for example, they recently started prompting for your PIN when you got back in the car after a stopover, instead of just at the beginning of the rental, as an extra security feature. That means that they’re either pushing software updates out to each car, or the cars are constantly online and the onboard displays are purely presentation layer. I suspect it’s a bit of both, although would love to find out more about the technology that (ahem) drives a car2go.

I signed up using the promo code TDOT, which waives the $35 signup fee (valid until September 2nd); with no annual fee, there is no reason not to sign up if you currently use taxis, transit or even rental cars in the central Toronto area. If you are signing up and want to give me a bit of credit for referring, just append my name to the promo code on the form (i.e., use the promo code “TDOT sandy kemsley”) and I’ll get 15 minutes of driving credit. Thanks!

After a few weeks of driving around in car2go, tweeting about it, and getting my friends to sign up, I was invited to a VIP event last week. As part of that, I was given a block of three consecutive days of unlimited use of a car2go, which I took this past Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Since I wasn’t on the clock, I probably used it more than I would have under normal circumstances, but definitely went to some places where I would go again. Here’s the journal of my three days as a car2go VIP.

Saturday morning

I’ve wanted to go to Wychwood Barns for the farmers market on Saturday mornings, but could never bother to TTC it up to Christie and St. Clair. In fact, it’s fitting that I would go there as my first car2go VIP drive since it was Suzanne Long, a big supporter of Wychwood, who turned me on to car2go in the first place and encouraged me to go there. I picked up my car in a lot a block from home, put my grocery buggy into the bag of the surprisingly large space behind the seats, and headed off. Getting close to where I thought it was, I saw several Green P lots appear on the GPS screen, guiding me in to a free parking spot. If I had been on a usual car2go by-the-minute trip, I could have ended my rental in any of those lots, although I would have risked having someone else grab the car before I got back to it. When I did park, I found another car2go and an AutoShare car there, so obviously others had the same idea about the Saturday market. I selected “Make a stopover” on the screen to indicate that I was keeping the car for now, took the keys with me, and headed to the market.

Great market! I made a number of purchases, from organic meat to fresh vegetables to some awesome chanterelle mushrooms. A lot of vendors there, and definitely worth the trip.

I dropped the car back at the same lot where I picked it up, and ended the rental.

Saturday afternoon

In the afternoon, I enticed my other half into the car2go with the offer of a trip to Home Depot, plus a side trip to PetSmart for the “best” cat litter. We picked up a different car2go from the same lot (it’s a very popular car2go parking spot) and zipped off to Laird and Eglinton. At 6’2” and quite leggy, he found the passenger seat very roomy: there was at least a handsbreadth of space between his head and the roof, and with the seat all the way back, his knees had plenty of space. He declared it “cool”, both the rental process and the cars, and is now a car2go member too.

Plenty of room in the back for bags of cat litter, cat toys and a few electrical supplies. I pulled up in front of our condo to drop him off with the load, then I took the car back to the lot and ended the rental.

Sunday

I figured that Sunday was a good day for an excursion, and we packed a beach bag in the back of our new car2go and headed for Bluffer’s Park in Scarborough. Out of downtown on the Gardiner and Lakeshore, I cruised out Kingston Road with very little traffic to compete.

I have only been to Bluffer’s Park once or twice (we west-enders tend to stay went of the DVP, if not west of Yonge), it’s a beautiful park and beach to wander around. The weather was hot and sunny, and although we didn’t end up swimming, we did have a great walk around a few of the park areas. The bluffs are quite dramatic looking, and there is an interesting set of settling ponds for the storm runoff, with some informational signs to let you know what’s happening there. Good spot for bird-watching as well as people-watching.

We had lunch at the Dogfish Pub at marina right on the water: food is okay, and the view is spectacularly peaceful. There was a lovely breeze off the lake, and we sat for quite a while enjoying watching the boats and the birds.

Our Smart car handled the steep grade down and back from the park with ease, and was great on the city streets. We had it up to speed on the Gardiner Expressway: it’s quiet and stable at highway speeds, as I had discovered a few weeks ago when I took one on a trip to Brampton.

Since we were coming in from a different direction and the traffic was heavy on Spadina, I decided to drop the car and end the rental at a different lot from where we picked it up, one that didn’t require crossing over Spadina. Although it is a small surface lot, there was another car2go already there, and the next day I noticed that the cars had moved around so they are obviously getting a lot of use.

Monday

I wasn’t expecting to use the car on my third free day because it was a bit rainy and I didn’t have any particular use for it that day, but made a last-minute decision to head to T&T Supermarket, which I rarely visit because it really requires a car: both for the distance and for the amount of interesting things that I tend to buy. I picked up Pat Anderson on my way since she lives near there, is car-less, and works from home so has a pretty flexible schedule (like me). Since I was heading east, I picked up a car on a lot across Spadina between rain showers.

Pat also declared it “cool” – she liked the design elements of the car, as well as the compact size for zipping around the city. T&T was fairly empty on a rainy Monday during the day, so we wandered the aisles, checking out the fish balls, the borscht in Chinese packaging and the huge variety of Asian foods that they carry. There was plenty of room in the back of the car for my wheeled cart and four bags of groceries. In fact, probably the only regular shopping trip that this wouldn’t work for would be a Costco run where I tend to get carried away and come home with 100-roll packages of toilet paper and the like, although maybe it would be a good lesson in restraint for me to go there in a Smart car!

I dropped the car at a different lot than where I picked it up, since it was more convenient to get to and closer to home. Again, I appreciated the flexibility to do that.

Summing it up

I used the cars a lot during the three days because I had unlimited use, but it’s helped to refine my actual use cases for them:

Taxi replacement for one-way trips. I used car2go to drive to a client meeting near Yonge and Bloor a few weeks back: I ended up just doing it one-way since I was in a hurry, and took transit home. It was about half the cost of what a taxi would have been, although to be fair, I did have to walk a few minutes at either end of the journey. My other half, who works at Yonge & Eglinton (which is at the edge of the car2go home area) occasionally needs to go to work before the subway opens, so he’ll probably use it then instead of a much more expensive taxi.

Trips where I’m not sure of the duration. A big down side of Zipcar (and AutoShare) is that you have to pre-specify how long you will have the car. If you’re over, you are penalized, since someone else may be waiting for that specific car at that spot. If you’re under, you still pay for the entire time. If I’m not sure of how long I’ll be, then car2go makes more sense and can end up being less expensive than Zipcar since I pay only for the time I use.

Weekend running around, since the day rate is the same (or cheaper) than Zipcar’s and I get free parking at any Green P lot in the home area.

In addition to the website for locating cars, there are a few iPhone apps for finding cars and parking spots. Unfortunately, the car2go app is not very good, but since they’ve opened their data/API, there are a few 3rd party apps that work fine. My current fave is car2go App Lite (free) from rrooaarr interactive solutions, which shows both cars and parking lots. I find that it has a bit of trouble when you have multiple cars close to you, sometimes it only identifies the closest one, but that’s usually not an issue.

One things that’s missing, which Zipcar (and I assume some of the others) have: a damage waiver to reduce my liability in the event of damage to the car. At Zipcar, I can pay $75 for a year or some smaller amount for an individual rental to reduce my deductible to $0; that would be nice for peace of mind if I end up using car2go a lot.

As I mentioned previously, the $35 signup fee is waived until September 2nd, so sign up before then with the promo code TDOT. Use “TDOT sandy kemsley” as the promo code to get the deal and give me 15 minutes of free driving!

One Reply to “Three Days as a car2go VIP”

Incredible ! Very informative. Although I don’t live in Toronto anymore, I will consider it an option when I visit. Certainly far more convienent than taxis. Thanks for taking the time to research and share your experience.